Huge allocations

Admittedly, this does not exist in the country; it never did. There is no effective mechanism to ward off corrupt practices and wasteful use of money that accounted for poor project implementation. The anti-corruption commission is still some way off. In any case, it is too early to say how independently it will perform; for, this will be critically dependent on the newly-formed selection committee choosing the right people for manning the commission. Even the Ombudsman's office, despite the passage of law in this regard, hangs fire.

Too many stages are involved in between project approval and implementation. It is a many-layered rigmarole with all the ingredients for slowing down the pace of project work. Moreover, projects are often taken up on political, rather than economic considerations, so that they are doomed to be non-starters or abandoned halfway. Delayed project implementation has often led to cost overruns.

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The Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division of the Planning Ministry found, during a recent survey, that the magnitude of corruption, malpractice and irregularities in 289 projects, out of 1345 undertaken during the last two fiscal years was quite staggering. Need we mention that the study of a limited number of projects only showed the tip of the iceberg -- in terms of the overall corrupt and wasteful resource utilisation pattern?

We need not, therefore, labour the point too much that proper utilisation of project funds will not be possible until the routes of leakage and wastage are sealed. This is a far more compelling necessity this time than anytime before, having regard to the higher allocations envisaged in the revenue and development budgets. One would have thought that the author of the national budget would have given a framework of guidelines for resource utilisation in such bigger quanta. Actually, the budget should have provided a recipe for implementation reforms as a strategic requirement.